Gerda Lerner

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Gerda Lerner teaching at the University of Wisconsin in 1984

Gerda Lerner (born April 30, 1920 as Gerda Hedwig Kronstein in Vienna ; † January 2, 2013 in Madison , Wisconsin ) was an Austrian-American historian . It is considered a pioneer of Women's History ( women's history ).

Live and act

Gerda Kronstein came from a wealthy Jewish family. Her mother Ilona was a painter and came from Hungary. Her father Robert was a pharmacist. Her sister Nora (* 1925) also became a painter and was also a textile designer. After the annexation of Austria she was able to take her Matura. Her father was able to move to Liechtenstein . She and her mother were arrested. Through the intervention of her teachers, she was surprisingly released from the several weeks of detention. They fled to their father in Liechtenstein. Gerda Kronstein fled to the United States without her parents.

In the States, she had to take on numerous low-paid jobs, such as a waitress or maid. In an interview with Alice Schwarzer in 2000 , she stated that she had “done every dirty job there was for women, everyone.” Gerda Kronstein also completed an apprenticeship as an X-ray technician. She married in 1939. The marriage ended in divorce in 1940. A year later she married the film producer Carl Lerner . She received American citizenship in 1943. She became pregnant in 1945 and stopped working as an X-ray assistant. She took a job at a union as chief secretary. The marriage with Carl Lerner resulted in two children in 1946 and 1947. Lerner became a member of the Communist Party and the Congress of American Women in 1946 . In mid-August 1949, the couple moved from Los Angeles to New York because of the communist persecution. Lerner began her history studies at the age of 38 in evening classes at the New School for Social Research . She continued her studies from 1963 to 1966 at Columbia University . In 1963 the Bachelor in History followed and in 1965 the Master. At the age of 46, she received her PhD from Columbia University in 1966. She was the first to do a doctorate on a women's history topic. Her dissertation dealt with the Grimké sisters ( Angelina Emily Grimké and Sarah Moore Grimké ), who had fought against slavery in South Carolina and at the same time stood up for the rights of women and blacks in the USA in the 19th century. The representation is considered a classic these days. Lerner became a founding member of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966 , which is now the largest feminist organization in the United States. In 1968 she became a professor in the Department of History at Sarah Lawrence College . There she established the country's first master’s program in women's history. It was introduced in 1972. Since 1980 she had the Robinson Edwards Professorship at the University of Wisconsin . There she set up the first nationwide doctoral program in women's history in 1990. She made numerous efforts to establish the subject at universities and in public. In 1980 a national “Women's History Week” was established through their initiative. In 1987 this was expanded to become a "Women's History Month". From 1980 to 1981, Lerner was the second woman president of the Organization of American Historians after the early modernist Louise P. Kellog . She played a major role in the fact that more professorships were held by women in the USA. In 1991 she retired. After her retirement, she lectured at Duke University.

Her research interests were US historical topics and women's history. The main focus was on the differences between Afro-Americans and Euro-Americans. In 1972 she published with "Black Women in White America" ​​("Black Women in White America") a comprehensive and irreplaceable source collection to this day. Another source collection followed in 1977 with “The Female Experience”. Her two source collections refuted the claim about the lack of sources on women's history. 1986 followed a treatise on "The Creation of Patriarchy" ("The Creation of Patriarchy"). In her presentation “The creation of feminist consciousness”, published in 1993, she spanned the time frame from the Middle Ages to the first women's movement and explored the question of why the subordination of women could last so long and why a feminist consciousness developed so slowly. The Lerner-Scott Prize is named after her and Anne Firor Scott . Since 1992, it has been honored annually for the best doctoral thesis in women's history in the USA. The German translation of her 2003 autobiography "Feuerkraut" ("Fireweed") was published in 2009.

Lerner has received numerous prizes and awards. She received the Käthe Leichter Prize in 1995 and the Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Art one year later . In 1998 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . She was the first woman to be awarded the Bruce Catton Prize in 2002. In the same year she received the Roy Rosenzweig Award from the American Historical Association . She was awarded a total of 18 honorary doctorates, including from the University of Vienna and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . In 2006 she was honored with the Bruno Kreisky Prize for the political book for her literary and journalistic oeuvre. Your life is to be filmed in a documentary. In 2012 she received the Women's Lifetime Achievement Award from the Federal Minister for Women and the Public Service.

Fonts

With the exception of The Grimké sisters from South Carolina. Rebels against slavery and editorships are all translated into German.

Monographs

  • Fireweed. A Political Autobiography. Temple University Press, Philadelphia PA 2002, ISBN 1-56639-889-4 (In German: Feuerkraut. A political autobiography. Translation from the American by Andrea Holzmann-Jenkins and Gerda Lerner. Czernin, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3- 7076-0290-6 ).
  • Why History Matters. Life and Thought. Oxford University Press, New York NY et al. 1997, ISBN 0-19-504644-7 (In German: Future needs past. Why history concerns us. From the American by Walmot Möller-Falkenberg. Helmer, Königstein / Taunus 2002, ISBN 3 -89741-096-6 ).
  • The Creation of Feminist Consciousness. From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy (= Women and History. Vol. 2). Oxford University Press, New York NY et al. 1993, ISBN 0-19-506604-9 (In German: The emergence of feminist consciousness. From the Middle Ages to the first women's movement (= women and history. Vol. 2). Translated from the English by Walmot Möller-Falkenberg, Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1993, ISBN 3-593-34916-7 ).
  • The Creation of Patriarchy (= Women and History. Vol. 1). Oxford University Press, New York NY et al. 1986, ISBN 0-19-503996-3 (In German: The emergence of the patriarchy (= women and history. Vol. 1). Translated from the English by Walmot Möller-Falkenberg. Campus-Verlag , Frankfurt am Main et al. 1991, ISBN 3-593-34529-3 ).
  • Teaching Women's History. American Historical Association, Washington DC 1981, ISBN 0-87229-023-9 .
  • The majority finds its past. Placing Women in History. Oxford University Press, New York NY 1979, ISBN 0-19-502597-0 (Also: The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill NC 2005, ISBN 0-8078-5606-1 ; in German: Women find their past. Basics of women's history. Translated from the English by Walmot Möller-Falkenberg, Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1995, ISBN 3-593-35242-7 ).
  • A Death of One's Own. Simon and Schuster, New York NY 1978, ISBN 0-671-24008-0 (In German: One own death. The key to life. From the American by Ute Seeßlen. Böhme and Erb, Düsseldorf 1979, ISBN 3-88458- 005-1 ).
  • The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina. Rebels against Slavery. Illustrated with photos. Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1967 (Revised and expanded edition. The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill NC 2004, ISBN 0-8078-5566-9 ).

Editorships

  • The Feminist Thought of Sarah Grimke. Oxford university Press, New York NY et al. 1998, ISBN 0-19-510604-0 .
  • The Female Experience. An American Documentary. Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing, Indianapolis IN 1977, ISBN 0-672-61248-8 .
  • Black women in white America. A documentary history. Pantheon Books, New York NY 1972, ISBN 0-394-47540-2 .

literature

  • Patrick Bahners : About the emergence of patriarchy and complicity in incapacitation. She founded women's history as an academic discipline: On the death of the American historian Gerda Lerner, who was born in Vienna. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , January 11, 2013, No. 9, p. 35.
  • Gisela Bock : Obituary for Gerda Lerner (April 30, 1920– January 2, 2013). In: History and Society . Vol. 39, 2013, pp. 259-278.
  • Andreas W. Daum : Refugees from Nazi Germany as Historians. Origins and Migrations, Interests and Identities. In: Andreas W. Daum, Hartmut Lehmann , James J. Sheehan (Eds.): The Second Generation: Émigrés from Nazi Germany as Historians. Berghahn Books, New York 2016, ISBN 978-1-78238-985-9 , pp. 1–52.
  • Annette Kuhn : What matters in the story. The historian and feminist Gerda Lerner. In: Beate Kortendiek, A. Senganata Münst (ed.): Lifeworks. Portraits of women and gender studies. Budrich, Opladen 2005, ISBN 3-938094-56-7 , pp. 80-99.
  • Alice Schwarzer : Gerda Lerner, historian. In: Alice Schwarzer: Alice Schwarzer portrays role models and idols. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-462-03341-7 , pp. 108-122. (First published in EMMA 3/2000)
  • Barbara Schaeffer-Hegel : Gerda Lerner (born 1920) , in: Hans Erler , Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich , Ludger Heid (eds.): “The world is created for me.” The intellectual legacy of German-speaking Judaism. 58 portraits. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-593-35842-5 , pp. 505-512
  • Barbara Serloth: Lerner, Gerda. In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Life - work - work. Böhlau, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1 , pp. 463-464.

Movie

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ I'm an alien. Conversation between Alice Schwarzer and Gerda Lerner. In: Emma , May / June 2000. See also Alice Schwarzer: Alice Schwarzer portrays role models and idols. Cologne 2003, pp. 109–122, here p. 111.
  2. ^ Annette Kuhn: What matters in the story. The historian and feminist Gerda Lerner. In: Beate Kortendiek, A. Senganata Münst (ed.): Lifeworks. Portraits of women and gender studies. 2005, pp. 80–99, here: p. 82.
  3. ^ Gisela Bock: Obituary for Gerda Lerner (April 30, 1920 - January 2, 2013). In: History and Society. Vol. 39, 2013, pp. 259-278, here pp. 272 ​​f.
  4. ^ Gisela Bock: Obituary for Gerda Lerner (April 30, 1920 - January 2, 2013). In: History and Society. Vol. 39, 2013, pp. 259–278, here p. 268, note 23.
  5. ^ Gisela Bock: Obituary for Gerda Lerner (April 30, 1920 - January 2, 2013). In: History and Society. Vol. 39, 2013, pp. 259–278, here p. 260.
  6. ↑ Women's Lifetime Achievement Award
personal data
SURNAME Lerner, Gerda
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kronstein, Gerda Hedwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian
DATE OF BIRTH April 30, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH January 2, 2013
Place of death Madison